Hostage crisis: five more snatched

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Four Jordanian truck drivers have been kidnapped in Iraq,
government spokeswoman Asma Khodr said, according to state-run
Petra news agency.

Iraqi police also said a Lebanese American contractor was
kidnapped overnight from his Baghdad home.

Lieutenant Colonel Maan Khalaf said the contractor, who works
for the US Army in the Green Zone, was snatched from his home in
the western Baghdad neighbourhood of Mansour around midnight.

Khalaf said armed gunmen knocked at the door to his home and
seized him when he answered the door. There were apparently no
guards at the time of the attack and no gunfire, he said.

The US Embassy said today it was checking reports of the
kidnapping but could not confirm an American was taken.

It is the second abduction this week in the upscale Mansour
neighbourhood, where many foreign companies are based.

On Monday, armed assailants stormed the two-story compound of a
Saudi company, abducting six people, including an American, a
Nepalese, a Filipino and three Iraqis, after a bloody gunbattle
that left an Iraqi guard and one of the attackers dead.

Two of the Iraqi guards taken were beaten up before being
released later Monday, police said.

The US Embassy has confirmed an American was kidnapped but
declined to release his name. The Manila government said a Filipino
accountant, identified as Roberto Tarangoy, was taken.

The offices where the hostages were abducted Monday is about 500
metres from the home where British contractor Kenneth Bigley and
two American coworkers, Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong, were
kidnapped by militants in September. All three were later
killed.

More than 160 foreigners have been abducted this year by
militants with political demands or by criminals seeking ransom. At
least 33 captives have been killed.

The abduction came two days after authorities found the
decapitated body of another hostage, 24-year-old Japanese
backpacker Shosei Koda. Al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in Iraq group said it
had kidnapped Koda and demanded a withdrawal of Japanese troops
from the country.

Koda's body was found Saturday, wrapped in an American flag and
dumped on a Baghdad street.